The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. This expansion of networks, and connectivity to data storage devices, has made remarkable quantities of information available to users of computers and mobile communications devices.
The expansion of these communications networks has accordingly fostered increased utilization of the networks. As utilization of communications networks increase, the communications channels of the networks can become increasingly congested. Congestion can result in latency in data delivery and reception, and an overall poor quality of service. To rectify these congestion problems, owners and operators of networks are forced to decide whether to spend additional capital to gain access to more bandwidth, or find ways to reduce traffic on the existing channels in a manner that also maintains a level of service acceptable to users. Since spending capital is typically not the favored solution, it is desirable to identify mechanisms for reducing communications traffic without generating a noticeable effect on the users of the network.
One particular type of network traffic that has substantially increased congestion on network channels is search queries used to locate data and the results of search queries. As users continue to increase their reliance on data retrieved from networks, an increasing number of queries used to find and retrieve data are being generated. Not only do queries increase traffic when sent to, for example, a search server, the returned results of the queries also generate substantial congestion.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to identify mechanisms that reduce communications traffic on networks. Further, it would be desirable to identify mechanisms that not only reduce data communications traffic but also provide users with the same or better level of service as provided in the absence of such mechanisms. In particular, networks can benefit from mechanisms that reduce the communications traffic associated with search queries, and the results of search queries, in a manner that is not detrimental to the quality of service currently provided to users.